In the eighties, computer processors became faster and faster, while memory access times stagnated and hindered additional performance increases. Something had to be done to speed up memory access and ...

Microprocessor-based systems are ideal for executing an essentially infinite number of tasks. The host microprocessors support a limited set of instructions that can combine to produce incredibly ...

The performance of a business computer at everyday tasks largely depends on two factors: its processor speed and the amount of memory it has. The processor's speed comes from its clock, a timing ...

In 1977, John Backus wrote a seminal paper titled, Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style? In this paper, Backus defined the implications of what we refer to today as the “memory ...

Figure 1: The electro-optic system on a chip. We use the direct chip-to-chip optical connectivity of the microprocessor chip to build a photonically connected main memory system for the microprocessor ...

Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. A correction was made to this story. Read below for ...